Celebrity Gossip Eases Social Isolation

From ancient villages to People magazine, feelings of connection provide a low-risk coping strategy

Based on the research of Rajagopal Raghunathan

Ages ago, when societies were organized around small villages, a person’s security and sense of belonging depended partly on how close they were to the village chiefs and elders. If the village was attacked, those closest to the powerful had a better chance of survival.

Today, gossip magazines such as People and Us Weekly fill a similar psychological need for inclusion, according to new research from Rajagopal Raghunathan, professor of marketing at Texas McCombs. Reading personal news about celebrities lets people feel some connection to them. That sentiment, in turn, helps alleviate feelings of social isolation.

The topic arose during his travels, he recalls, when he noticed many people reading such magazines and became curious about their motivations. People magazine, he notes, has a monthly reach of 98 million readers.

Says Raghunathan: “I wondered whether a psychological phenomenon might be happening, where they feel a sense of closeness to these people by getting to know all this private information about them. If so, does that closeness provide some kind of positive benefit to them?”

With Jayant Nasa of the Indian Institute of Management Udaipur and Tanuka Ghoshal of Baruch College, Raghunathan conducted four different experiments totaling 1,600 volunteers in both the U.S. and India.

In one experiment, some volunteers were prompted to write about an experience of feeling socially excluded, while a control group was not. Both groups then rated their interest in both gossip and non-gossip articles, on ascending scales of 1 to 7.

The result: Those feeling excluded were 1.5 points more interested in gossip articles than the control group. By contrast, both groups were equally interested in non-gossip articles.

Other experiments determined:

• Socially excluded consumers find celebrity gossip content more appealing than non-gossip content.
• Their interest is driven by feelings of closeness with the celebrity.

The final experiment investigated whether social exclusion drove people more strongly toward gossip than did other kinds of psychological threats: feeling unintelligent or not in control.

It found that social exclusion had a stronger effect than the other two threats, with 39% of socially excluded volunteers choosing gossip over non-gossip articles. Among those prompted to feel unintelligent, only 23% chose gossip.

The key, Raghunathan explains, is the emotional need for affiliation. People enhance their senses of security and belonging by feeling closer to people of higher status.

“Think back to our reptilian brain and rewind back maybe 2,000 years,” he says. “Your chances of survival are higher if you’re closer to the chief, if you’re higher up in the hierarchy.

“How does our brain know if you’re closer to somebody higher up? One of the ways in which it figures this out is by asking itself, ‘Do I know much about the chief?’”

From Exclusion to Connection

For marketers, the takeaway from the research is Marketing 101: Know your audience. Say a publication caters to young stay-at-home moms who may be socially isolated. It can connect with them by publishing pictures of a celebrity attending his child’s football game.

The study also suggests that celebrities who want to build their brands can benefit from sharing personal tidbits with popular media, fostering feelings of closeness.

Critics might argue that individuals wanting to feel more connected should seek more in-person interaction rather than read celebrity gossip. But Raghunathan says, “I’m not sure you’re going to be successful discouraging this kind of behavior.”

After all, he points out, the behavior carries relatively little risk for the reader and taps into deeply rooted human instincts. He says, “If you think back to the reasons why this kind of coping is prevalent, it’s because it really is very, very deeply hardwired in us.”

“A Comforting Cup of Celeb Tea: Understanding How Social Exclusion Influences the Appeal of Celebrity Gossip” is published in the European Journal of Marketing.

Story by Suzi Morales